[VideoView]
Dipl.-Vw. Dr. Ludwig Steiner
I always got good bread from your mother
interviewer:
Ruth Deutschmann
photography:
Benjamin Epp
copyright location:
Wien
date of recording:
2008-04-29
English translation by:
Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner
Italian translation by:
Nicole D´Incecco
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1930
transcription:
I made some interesting experiences in my youth. As adolescents we delivered bread from our bakery in the mornings before school. We delivered buns of white bread to people's front doors. We did that before going to school. It was quite good training for later on, because you had to deal with and be curious about everything. It was interesting to find out that civil servants were people who ran out of money by the end of the month. In consequence, they always wrote IOU's as of the 15th of the month for the bread they ordered which was delivered to their door. My mother who was in charge of the books in the bakery had a box full of little books. Every day she entered the debts there. But we only got the money on the first of the month, often with difficulty. So even as a small business it was possible to detect civil servants' financial difficulties, even though they thought they were something better. The economic hardships at the end of the 1920s until the 1930s were extraordinary. Beggars came to us for bread. My mother always took care to give them good, not stale, old bread. There was a butcher beside us and there they got some slices of sausage. From us they got the bread. This is interesting because the consequences of this situation had an effect for decades. For example: in 2005 someone called me and told me: "I often went to your bakery and your mother always gave me good bread." It is incredible how the situation helped develop a very strong social conscience. We knew what it meant to be poor, no doubt about it. One thing was also impressive: At that time trade boys from Hamburg, wearing their traditional outfit, came frequently. They would do odd jobs for us for room and board. The custom was to patronise the inn that you supplied. My father didn't like sitting around in inns. So he took the opportunity when trade boys came. By housing them in the inn he fulfilled his obligation. ... There were different characters among them. All of them were perfect craftsmen who took good care of their tools. ... They weren't really beggars. They had books where you noted what they had done and whether it was a good job. After wandering for one year they returned to Hamburg or northern Germany with the books.